22 February 2011

First time director Hiromasa Yonebayashi has won the Japanese Academy Prize for Animation of the Year at the Japanese Academy Awards for The Borrower Arrietty (2010). Yonebayashi worked his way up at Studio Ghibli from the role of inbetweener on films like Princess Mononoke (1997) to doing key animation on recent films like Ponyo (2008). I have not been lucky enough to see the film yet, but judging from the art in the book tie-in it will not disappoint. I can at least take solace in the fact that I live in Europe, where Arrietty will be released this year, rather than the States, where the release has been pushed back into 2012. No word yet on a Japanese DVD release date.

Other films nominated for the Animation of the Year included Colorful (Keiichi Hara, 2010) – which won the top animation prize at the Mainichi Film Concours, Doraemon The Movie: Nobita's Great Battle of the Mermaid King (Kōzō Kusuba, 2010), Detective Conan: The Lost Ship in the Sky (Yasuichiro Yamamoto, 2010), and One Piece Film: Strong World (Munehisa Sakai, 2010)

The Japanese Academy Awards have been given out annually since 1978. Despite the high output and quality of Japanese animation for many decades now, the Japanese Academy has only had an animation category for five years. Kiki’s Delivery Service (Hayao Miyazaki, 1989) and Pom Poko (Isao Takahata, 1994) were given special prizes in 1990 and 1995. The wildly popular Studio Ghibli films also managed to win the Academy’s top prize – taking Picture of the Year in 1998 for Princess Mononoke and again in 2002 for Spirited Away (2001).

The Japanese Academy Awards modeled themselves on the Hollywood Academy Awards, which has also only had an award for Best Animation Feature since 2001. They have, however, been honouring animated shorts since 1931 – I am sure this is largely due to the influence of Hollywood-based animation studios like Disney and Warner Bros.

18 February 2011

In the autumn of 2006, I went to see the Nihonga Painting: Six Provacative Artists exhibition at the Yokohama Museum of Art. Each artist was indeed provacative in his or her own way, from the horrifically beautiful paintings of Fuyuko Matsui to the crazed doodlings of Shiriagari Kotobuki.

The installations that made the biggest impact on me were the 'moving paintings' of Mami Kosemura. At the time, I could only describe my impression of her work but I have since discovered that Kosemura has uploaded low-res samples of her work onto the internet. Although it is not as impactful to watch these 'moving paintings' via video-streaming as it is to see them in a gallery, it at least gives one an idea of what the experience was like. Before watching the videos, read my original post to understand their original context. These stop motion animated shorts were not simply projected onto bare walls, but were projected onto specific spaces using furnishings that suggest a traditional Japanese house.

For the nature themed installations, Kosemura designed elaborate sets at her studio and shot the film frame-by-frame over a period of months. For example, to create the third video below from the Flowering Plants of the Four Seasons series, Kosemura set up a 3 meter wide set and using a digital camera shot a photo every hour for two months. In the end, she had a total of 1,500 photos which she then edited to give them a painterly look. This particular animation was projected onto a fusama for the Yokohama exhibition (see sample installation images at top of page).

Comb and Woman in the Mirror are also shot using a similar stop motion technique but using actors and interior spaces. These two installations are based on woodblock prints by Hashiguchi Goyo. In addition to her work as an artist, Kosemura is a scholar of art history and her art is heavily influenced by her academic knowledge. Read more about Comb and the techniques used in these installations in my review here. To learn more about the Nihonga exhibition these works were a part of, see the links at the end of this post.

12 February 2011

This is the final weekend to catch the 14th annual Japan Media Arts Festival in Tokyo with its 170 exciting exhibitions, screenings, and live performances. This year’s call for entries attracted 2,645 entries from 49 countries. The Grand Prize in animation went to Masaaki Yuasa (Mind Game, Genius Party, Kaiba) for the Madhouse TV anime series The Tatami Galaxy (四畳半神話大系/ Yojōhan Shinwa Taikei, 2010), which aired April 22 – July 1, 2010 on Fuji TV. The series was adapted from the novel of the same name by Tomihiko Morimi.

This marks the first time that a television series has won the Grand Prize at JMAF. The jury described the series as “overflow[ing] with expressiveness” and being a rare television anime in the way that defies the commercial limitations that are usually put onto such works. They were particularly impressed by the carefully researched use of Kyoto as a setting and the stylistic distortions Yuasa gave the animated spaces and characters of the series. Available on DVD from cdjapan.

Sunao Katabuchi for his feature film Mai Mai Miracle (マイマイ新子と千年の魔法/Maimai Shinko to Sen-nen no Mahō, 2009). This is an adaptation of the biographical novel Mai Mai Shinko by Akutagawa Award-winning novelist Nobko Takagi. The animation was produced by Madhouse. Check out the teaser trailer at Nippon Cinema. Available on DVD from cdjapan.

Hiroyasu Ishida for his hilarious short animation Fumiko’s Confession (フミコの告白). Ishida will be screening his latest animated short next week at the Kyoto International Manga Museum. Read more about it and see a preview at the Animation News Network.

Korean-born, America-based animator Beomsik Shimbe Shim for his puppet animation The Wonder Hospital. This film has won recognition at festivals around the world including the Best Animated Short awards at the Los Angeles Film Festival, the Seattle International Film Festival, and the San Diego Asian Film Festival. Check out a clip from the film, a trailer, and other cool footage on Shimbe’s Vimeo Profile.

You can learn more about the Japan Media Arts Festival and past winners at their website. Unfortunately, their English webpages have been down since the festival started so you may have to check back later in the month if you can’t read Japanese.

11 February 2011

For reasons that I have been so far unable to deduce, the 65th annual Mainichi Film Concourslast month declined to award a Noburo Ofuji Award for 2010. This is certainly not for want of talent. There were many alternative animated films released last year that embody the original aim of the award: to promote innovation in animation. Atsushi Wada’s film In a Pig’s Eye has been winning acclaim both at home and abroad and Keita Kurosaka’s Midori-ko would also have been a worthy winner. They could have also given long overdue recognition to the work of Keiichi Tanaami and Nobuhiro Aihara by awarding the Noburo Ofuji to their latest collaboration Hannya Shingyo.

The Animation Award (sometimes referred to in English as the Animation Grand Award – although the Japanese translates literally as the Animation Film Award) debuted in 1989, when it became apparent that the Noburo Ofuji Award was moving away from its roots in independent, alternative fare into the territory of mainstream anime. Hayao Miyazaki had just won the Noburo Ofuji for the fourth time with My Neighbour Totoro and it was looking like he was about to win again for Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989). The Mainichi Film Concours designed the Animation Award in order to honour feature film animation. The films that have won the award have usually been commercially successful but the main consideration is still the technical achievements of the animation.

Kiki’s Delivery Service did indeed win the Animation Award for 1989, but no Noburo Ofuji Award was given out that year. The Noburo Ofuji Award was also skipped in 1992, 1994, and 1997 – all years in which Studio Ghibli films won the Animation Award. In an interesting twist in 2001, Miyazaki won both the Noburo Ofuji for his short film The Whale Hunt, and the grand prize for Spirited Away. In 2008, Miyazaki again won the Noburo Ofuji for Ponyo, while the grand prize was awarded to The Sky Crawlers.